


What Lurks Below

by silverskyfullofstars



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood, Gen, Ghost Stories, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Legends, Murder, Pre-WS Bucky, i guess there's sort of implied human sacrifice?, implied suicide (not graphic), irish/celtic mythology, stories from within HYDRA
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 19:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16501328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverskyfullofstars/pseuds/silverskyfullofstars
Summary: HYDRA is tightly controlled and tightly policed, but even that won't keep the rumors from spreading.This is probably going to be a perpetually updating collection of short stories. Each story will be connected to the main concept, but they don't have to be read together to make sense.Rated M in case I start writing too violently.





	1. Chapter 1

Low-level agents didn’t know about what was in the basement. They weren’t allowed to - only the scientists and the heavily armed guards ever went down to that level. One junior agent swore he saw a Head of HYDRA going down there, but the agent went missing after telling a few newbies a story about the real hydra kept in the basement. As if. There was no hydra down there, not the nine-headed serpent of myth. What was down there was a monster far worse, a legend no one would ever want to repeat. Still, no sense in spreading falsehoods.

 

When people “disappeared” like that, it was said they were sent to the basement. That they were thrown in a subterranean lake with the hydra of legend, and that every scream made the beast grow stronger. If you listened, at the witching hour when stars glittered like shards of broken glass and the night darkened with the sudden loss of power, you could hear the echoing screams of the hydra’s victims. No one below level eight had ever been down there, and the ones who had wouldn’t talk. They knew the risks. Loose lips led to a fate worse than death.

 

If they were higher than level eight, they might know about the reinforced metal doors just after you exit the elevator, guarded by four men on each side. They might know about the identical door after that, and the one after that, and the one guarded by twelve of the best HYDRA guards ever to walk the concrete floors, specially trained to take down the horror within. They might know that when the door finally opened, when the white coats finally parted… HYDRA’s greatest horror was a single man.

 

He sat in a metal chair, a hulking beast of a machine that resonated with the hum of electricity. The arcs of metal near the headrest were a mystery to most, but they heralded nothing good. If, by chance, one happened to see the Asset’s face, they would turn away quickly. The man had eyes that screamed of death, like a blazing fire layered under so much ice that it glazed over, alive and yet dead in a paradoxical half-life. If one were able to look past that dead-eyed stare, one might notice that in another life, the Asset would have been handsome - even beautiful. But here, in the chair, in the basement, in the heart of the HYDRA, Death looks out of eyes framed by hollow cheeks, blood-red lips, and long, limp hair, dark as night and matted with dried blood.


	2. Chapter 2

There was one man among the more human assassins who called himself the Storyteller. Some took the name literally, others heard the sarcastic sneer behind it. The one that said, “ _ Who am I to name myself? The heads are the only names that matter. Maybe I only use this one because I am too scared to be forgotten _ . They say that before he killed his victims, he offered them a chance to be remembered in the form of a story. They also say he was an informant for the Heads of HYDRA, but when alcohol was passed around and loose lips joined lowered guards, the stories found new homes in new minds.

“There was a man who didn’t give me a story as much as a warning,” the Storyteller started on many a night.

“A warning? To you?” someone would ask.

“Not a warning of mortal men. He had no fear of them - though he should have. A mortal man slit his throat.”

“What did he warn of?” someone would always hunger to know.

“Fae creatures - monsters that walk in human form, repelled by iron and the color red. Controlled only by those who know their names.”

 

At this point, someone with higher clearance or a gossiping acquaintance would think of the man in the basement. The man with the metal arm, with a red star painted on it. The one they freeze in ice and bring out only for the highest Heads. No one else may command him.

 

Then, someone else would snort and laugh, dismissing it all with a wave of a half-full bottle.

“Maybe so, and maybe one day all the dead will rise to fight God in the streets of DC. Maybe a real hydra will melt New York to acid and flying monkeys will tear the survivors apart. Maybe you’re a fool, believing whatever people tell you.”

 

The Storyteller would always laugh it off, because deep inside he knew he was a fool. They were all fools, fools to think they could control the man in the basement because the Storyteller knew the real truth, that he was just a man. A man who was not himself, his humanity deleted and replaced with rattling bones and dripping blood. And one day, in a twist of fate, when the Asset went to kill him for knowing too much, he smiled with bloody teeth and said, “How ironic it is that the Fist of HYDRA wishes to let go! Follow me into the afterlife, my friend, and we shall do it on our own terms.”

 

The gunshot wasn’t the Soldier’s.

 

One man walked out, wrapped in leather and cloaked in shadows and darkness, returning to his monster’s cave in the darkest corner of the world. His heart beat, his body moved, but he did not think. He just walked with scarlet footprints and glassy eyes, a frozen corpse with no identity, no home but blood and ice.


End file.
